Blue G3 Tower... questions

[chaosbunny]

I came across a small print center yesterday and they had a nice clean blue G3 Tower in the window display. Inside they were all pc. I asked them if it was for sale and how much it would cost. The guy there said he'd ask and call me. Today he told me it was a 350 mhz G3 with 6 gb hd and 64 mb ram and that it was fully operational. The price is € 200. Don't know if this is a good price, my belly tells me it's not too good. Maybe I could talk with them and get it for € 150. I would turn this thing into a media computer, something I originally wanted to do with my cube. The advantage I guess would be that I could open the G3 more easily and add a bigger hd, more ram and a dvd reading drive, set it up on 10.3, hook it to my tv and connect it with my eye tv. You think this is a good idea? The big question is, can I build an airport card into this thing to connect it to the internet when it's standing next to my tv? If this works and I sum up the airport card, ram, hd will I be slowly in the dimension when a mini isn't that much more expensive?

Any oppinions are highly appreciated

 

[CanadaRAM]

200 seems too much.
The machine is limited to 1 Gb RAM using specific PC100 256 Mb modules (generic PC133's will not work)
The only thing this machine has going for it over the Mini is slots and the ability to use 3.5" hard drives. It's much slower all around.

 

[ntg]

I have put 1Gb of RAM in a G3-400 which has a 64Mb Pci ATI graphics card and an 80Gb 7200rpm H/D.

It runs Tiger quite nicely, and a €35 Pci 802.11g card will give it full wireless function nicely.

This will quite happily serve as a media centre, so I would say it is worth €200 if that is all you want to do with it (you don't need Tiger for that!)

I live in the UK, and I wouldn't sell mine for less than £200, ie €300!!

Nig.

 

[debroglie]

That is certainly not a good deal.... actually it is quite a horrible deal

 

[DZ/015]

Where to begin?
In short, buy a mini for what you want to do. It will be cheaper and less frustrating.

Some things to be aware of:
- You will need at least 512 MB ram to run OS X well.
- A faster processor will be necessary. The 350 will be slooooow.
- Early (rev.1) B&W units had issues with data corruption. The hard drive controllers were buggy.
- Only has PCI graphics.
- No airport slot. Will need a PCI card for wireless connectivity.

Head to Apple's support site. There is an extensive forum for the B&Ws at http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?14@688.a5BeawCF4LY.1@.5998b4e9

I have 3 of the B&W G3s, so I can tell you there will be issues.

 

[chaosbunny]

Thanks for your oppinions. I guess I won't get the G3. It's better to wait a little bit longer for my media center computer. If I tune my cube for those € 200 I'll have a much better media center computer. € 500 for a mini is too expensive for me right now.

I'm really thankful, you stopped me from doing something I maybe would have regretted!

 

[link92]

I got an upgraded B&W G3 from eBay.co.uk for £165, specs:

600MHz G4
120GB HD
512MB RAM
DVD-RW
Zip
Panther

I had a spare Tiger license, so that's what it's currently running.

 

[mward333]

I got one of the basic B & W G3 towers for free this summer at the University of Pennsylvania. The student newspaper was giving 4 of them away for free! Mine was the first, and it had a DVD drive upgrade. So I was quite happy about this free computer. I love it! I think the price they were asking for yours was too expensive. On the other hand, you can't beat "free" of course.

 

[Lopez.T.H.]

http://www.wegenermedia.com/?

Blue G3 towers starting at $99....